U STORIES: Oral History and Urban Experiences Case of the Center for Urban History Archival Project Natalia Otrishchenko

Institutional Context Center was founded in 2004 as a private non-profit research and academic organization committed to non-material aims interdisciplinary research organization (historians, sociologists, art historians, geographers, architects, and IT-specialists)

Activities Research projects Exhibitions Summer schools International conferences Seminars Public discussions Presentations

U Stories Project Collections: experiences connected with place of living (oral history of city districts) experiences connected with area of activities (professional live) collection of interviews with participants of EuroMaidan in Kyiv, Lviv, and Kharkiv Focus groups with history teachers

U Stories Project Criteria for organizing collections: (1) topic and origin (relation to the project); (2) methodology (general logic of the research, aims, hypotheses, specifics of the sample and questionnaire); (3) procedure (terms of realization of field stage, one group of interviewers, coordinator).

U Stories Project: Methodology Oral history (narrative / biographical) In-depth semi-structured thematic interviews Qualitative sociological tradition (interviews, focus group discussions)

U Stories Project Qualitative interviews and oral history were used as methods of understanding and identifying: how communities create and maintain their own vision of the past how people deal with their social and individual identities how people experiences their home and city in general

U Stories Project: Access Description of collection available on-line, transcripts and audio only after registration: Request form Signing informed consent with researcher Norms from Ethical Codex and Ukrainian legislation Question of editing audio and transcripts

Ethical Issues Work in all contexts (macro, meso, and micro) and on every stage of the research General Rules: Codes of professional Ethics Importance of informed consent: with an informant and with a researcher

Future perspectives make history more personal, raise different perspectives, answer to the monolithic view of the past, see how people live through different historic periods, reveal the difference between macro level of historical narratives of the state and institutions and a micro level of personal stories.

For more information see http://www. lvivcenter For more information see http://www.lvivcenter.org/uk/ust/ or e-mail: n.otrishchenko@lvivcenter.org